The weirdest thing to ever happen on stage at the Academy Awards was a huge mistake, and it’s hard to imagine it will ever be topped. What could be bigger, after all, than announcing the wrong movie as the winner of the Oscar for best picture?

Boo-boos don’t get any bigger than that, and the screams and hollers that erupted in 2017 inside the Kodak Theatre and homes around the world were entirely justified. The cast and creators of “La La Land” got to enjoy their Oscar for roughly 2 minutes and 30 seconds before the true winners of “Moonlight” were called on stage to claim what was rightly theirs.

But while that might be the strangest thing ever at the Oscars, it’s not even close to the only weird thing ever to take place on stage, in the audience or on the red carpet.

“La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz, left, presenter Warren Beatty, center, and host Jimmy Kimmel right, look at an envelope announcing “Moonlight” as best picture at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It was originally announced mistakenly that “La La Land” was the winner. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

A streaker runs across the stage at the Academy Awards in 1974 as David Niven isn’t quite sure what’s happening behind him. (Associated Press file photo)

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Best supporting actress Angelina Jolie accepts her Oscar during the 72nd Academy Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, Sunday, March 26, 2000. She won for her role in “Girl, Interrupted.” And then announced that she was in love with her brother. (AP Photo/Eric Draper)

Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather tells the audience at the Academy Awards ceremony in 1973 that Marlon Brando was declining to accept his Oscar as best actor for his role in “The Godfather.” The move was meant to protest Hollywood’s treatment of American Indians. (Associated Press file photo)

Actor Rob Lowe croons a tune to Snow White during the opening number for the 61st Academy Awards presentation in Los Angeles in 1989. (AP Photo/ Reed Saxon, File)

Singer Bjork, wearing a Marjan Pejoski swan gown, arrives at the 73rd annual Academy Awards Sunday, March 25, 2001, in Los Angeles. Bjork is nominated for best song for “I’ve Seen it All” from the film “Dancer in the Dark.” (AP Photo/Michael Caulfield)

Seth MacFarlane during the Oscars at the Dolby Theatre on Sunday Feb. 24, 2013, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

John Travolta, right, touches the face of Idina Menzel as they present the award for best original song at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 22, 2015, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. A year earlier Travolta had introduced her by mangling her name. (Photo by John Shearer/Invision/AP)

Australian producer Jan Chapman, seen here during a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, had to announce that she is “alive and well” despite her photo’s inclusion in the In Memoriam tribute at the Oscars on Feb. 26, 2017. (AP Photo/Francois Mori, File)

“South Park’s” Trey Parker, wearing a Jennifer Lopez-style dress, left, and Marc Shaiman, nominated for the song “Blame Canada” from the movie “South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut,” arrive with Matt Stone, right, also of “South Park,” at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles for the 72nd Academy Awards Sunday, March 26, 2000. (AP Photo/Mark Terrill)

Actor Adrien Brody suprises presenter Halle Berry with a kiss after he won the Oscar for best actor for his work in The Pianist at the 75th annual Academy Awards Sunday, March 23, 2003, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian)

Actor Jack Palance does a one-handed push-up on stage at the 64th annual Academy Awards March 30, 1992 after winning an Oscar for best actor in a supporting role for his performance in the film “City Slickers.” (AP Photo/Craig Fuji)

“La La Land” producer Jordan Horowitz, second from left, hugs “Moonlight” director Barry Jenkins as “Moonlight” producer Adele Romanski looks on after “Moonlight” was named the true best picture winner at the Oscars on Sunday, Feb. 26, 2017, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. It was originally announced mistakenly that “La La Land” was the winner. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)

We dug through our archives, mental and otherwise, and came up with a list of moments that were odd when they happened, make you cringe when you think about them, or still leave us scratching our heads, like Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway moments after they gave that Oscar for best picture to “La La Land” and then learned they’d announced the wrong name through no fault of their own.

1. Oh, yes, they call him The Streak: Actor David Niven was on stage at the Oscars in 1974 when a photographer named Robert Opel ran past him on stage as naked as the day he was born — though much, much hairier. This was peak Streak time — the novelty single “The Streak” by Ray Stevens had come out a week before — and as Opel flashed past him Niven delivered a quip so smooth that some still believe the incident was staged.

“Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was almost bound to happen,” the dapper Brit declared. “But isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?”

2. Brotherly love: Before Angelina Jolie became a mom and a humanitarian advocate on behalf of children, she was kind of a wild child herself. At the Oscars in 2000, where Jolie won best supporting actress for her work in “Girl, Interrupted,” she raised plenty of eyebrows with her close relationship to her Oscar date: her brother James Haven. “I’m so in love with my brother right now,” Jolie told the world at the start of her acceptance speech. “He just held me and said he loved me and I know he’s so happy for me.”

Later, at one of the after-parties, Angie and Jamie were photographed with lips locked in the French fashion, but hey, like his sister, he does have great lips if we’re being honest.

3. Marlon Brando & Sacheen Littlefeather: George C. Scott became the first best actor winner to refuse his Oscar when he won for “Patton” in 1971, but he stayed home in bed with his wife and let producer Frank McCarthy grab it instead. But two years later, when pretty much the world expected Marlon Brando to win best actor for “The Godfather,” the actor did Scott one better, sending Native American activist Sacheen Littlefeather to accept the trophy in his stead. She used the moment to protest the treatment of American Indians in the film and television industry and show support for the then-ongoing standoff between protesters and law enforcement at Wounded Knee, S.D.

4. Snow White, Rob Lowe, and … Dancing Tables?: The opening number for the 1989 Oscars is rightly remembered as a train wreck. The poor actress playing Snow White was given the thankless task of running around the theater — while dancers wearing stars high-kicked on stage — and interacted with the biggest movie stars on the planet. Then she and Rob Lowe did a song-and-dance routine, Merv Griffin sang, and the tables inside the faux nightclub stood up and danced. As Snow White once (almost) sang, I’m wishing … this had never happened.

5. Björk lays an egg: The Icelandic singer turned heads when she showed up at the 2001 Oscars wearing a dress that looked like a swan wrapped around her body, and proceeded to lay several eggs along the red carpet as she entered the ceremonies. People freaked out, but c’mon, what did you expect Björk to wear, a Bob Mackie gown?

6. Seth MacFarlane is a boob: It’s shocking how recent it was — 2013, just six years ago — that host Seth McFarlane thought it would be fun to do a musical number called “We Saw Your Boobs” in which he and members of a gay men’s chorus sang about all the actresses they’d seen topless in the movies. Naomi Watts and Charlize Theron did not look at all happy at being included in the cringe-inducing song. It’s hard to imagine how this could exist even in the pre-#MeToo era. I mean, the song name-checks Jodie Foster and Hilary Swank in movies where they were victims of sexual violence. Yeesh.

7. Idina Menzel, meet Adele Dazeem: Actor John Travolta is supposed to be able to handle a cue card but at the 2014 Oscars he might have butchered a name worse than anyone in Oscar history when he introduced “Frozen” singer Idina Menzel as something that sounded like “Adele Dazeem.” A year later they both appeared on the show to make light of it, which was nice, but then he grabbed her face in a weird way.

8. In memoriam of an In Memoriam: The annual photo montage of the Hollywood Dead — which unlike the Hollywood Vampires does not yet include Johnny Depp — always leaves fans of someone upset that their dearest departeds didn’t make the cut. One year it was Joan Rivers, another it was Adam West. A lot of people were upset when Abe Vigoda didn’t make it, though surely the guy who played Tessio in the “The Godfather” would have known it was simply business, not personal. But the worst In Memoriam moment came in 2017 when Oscars included a photo of Jan Chapman in the slide show — prompting the Australian film producer to announce she was very much still alive.

9. In drag. On the red carpet. On acid: Of course, you wouldn’t expect Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of “South Park,” to behave just because it’s the Oscars. They’d been nominated for best original song for “Blame Canada” from “South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut.” So they showed up in gowns: Parker’s being an ode, though maybe that’s being generous, to Jennifer Lopez’s plunging green number from the Grammys one year, Stone’s dress a pink semi-replica of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Oscar dress from the previous year. All of that they’d planned in advance. Popping sugar cubes laced with LSD? That was a spur-of-the-moment thing on the way to the show.

10. When Adrien mauled Halle: When Adrien Brody arrived on stage in 2003 to accept the best actor award for his work in “The Pianist,” you can see presenter Halle Berry ready for the customary cheek kiss only to find herself dipped into a passionate smooch from Brody instead. It’s remarkable that some found this unwanted non-consensual contact romantic at the time. Berry didn’t, telling Andy Cohen on Bravo a few years ago that her only thought was, “What the (heck) is going on?”

11. Jack Palance drops and delivers: The longtime actor won the best supporting actor Oscar for his work as the cowboy Curly in “City Slickers,” but what everyone remembers is how in the middle of talking about the difficulties of getting parts as a 73-year-old in Hollywood he stepped away from the podium to do a few one-armed push-ups to show off his fitness. What fewer remember is that after accepting the trophy from Whoopi Goldberg, he kicked off his speech with a riff on a line from the movie and a shot at his co-star in it: “Billy Crystal … I crap bigger than him.”

12. Speaking of Billy Crystal: In 2012, the Oscars already were sensitive to public criticism — a year earlier Brett Ratner bowed out as producer of the show because of a gay slur he’d used. But right there in the opening monologue host Billy Crystal did his long-running imitation of Rat Pack entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in blackface (jump to 5:38 in the video below). While there was some criticism, one of Davis’ kids said after the show she was sure Sammy would have been 100 percent OK with Crystal’s impression, but seven years later it’s impossible to imagine this happening again.

Peter Larsen has been the Pop Culture Reporter for the Orange County Register since 2004, finally achieving the neat trick of getting paid to report and write about the stuff he's obsessed about pretty much all his life. He regularly covers the Oscars and the Emmys, goes to Comic-Con and Coachella, reviews pop music, and conducts interviews with authors and actors, musicians and directors, a little of this and a whole lot of that. He grew up, in order, in California, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon. Graduated from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Ore. with degrees in English and Communications. Earned a master's degree at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Earned his first newspaper paycheck at the Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat, fled the Midwest for Los Angeles Daily News and finally ended up at the Orange County Register. He's taught one or two classes a semester in the journalism and mass communications department at Cal State Long Beach since 2006. Somehow managed to get a lovely lady to marry him, and with her have two daughters. And a dog named Buddy. Never forget the dog.